
Glass. 
Book 



fit 








SERMON, 



PREACHED ON 



"? 



SABBATH MORNINa, APRIL 16, 1865. 



THE DAY AFTER THE 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



BY THE 

REV. WM. IRVIX, 

Pas-tor of the Presbyterian Church, R 





ilcto-jjcuk : 
JOHN A. GRAY & GREEN, PRINTERS, 16 AND 18 JACOB STREET. 

1 8 (i 5 . 




SERMON, 



rr.KACIIED OS 



SABBATH MORNINGS APPilL 16, 1865. 



THE DAT AFTER THE 



DEATH OF PKESIDENT LINCOLN. 



a 
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3 



BY THE 

REV. WM. IRVIN, 

M 

Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Rondout, N. Y. 




JOHN A. GRAY & GREEN, PRINTERS, 16 AND 18 JACOB STREET. 



18 6 5 



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cobkespoxde:n"ce. 



Rev. Wm. Irvin : 

Dear Sir: Having listened with great gratification to your sermon of 
yesterday morning, we beg you to furnish us a copy for publication. 

Respectfully yours, 

John McCausland, 
William II. De Graff, 
George W. Dubois, 
Walter B. Crane, 
John P. Hill, 

Member* of Session. 

Rondout, April 17, 1865. 



Rondout, N. Y., April 28, 18G5. 
Dear Brethren : I have received your note, requesting for publication 
the sermon preached to you on the Sabbath morning following the death 
of President Lincoln. In complying with your request, I have written out 
the sermon, not written when preached, nearly as it was spoken, preferring 
to do so, rather than attempt by improvement to make it possibly more 
worthy of the permanent form you wish to give it. 

Yours, most sincerely, 

Wm. Irvin. 
Messrs. McCausland, De Graff, etc. 

Members of Session. 



SERMON. 



II Samuel 3 : 34, 38. 

" As a man falleth before ■wicked men, so fellest thou." 
" Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this 
day in Israel?" 

You are doubtless familiar, my brethren, with the 
circumstances in which these words were spoken. 
Abner, to whom they refer, had been the able and 
faithful general of the army of Saul. He had stood 
by his royal master through every vicissitude of for- 
tune, and after Saul's death espoused the cause of Ish- 
bosheth, his son ; but becoming disaffected to the lat- 
ter, and recognizing the divine purpose to give the 
kingdom to David, he transferred his allegiance to 
him. David received him with honor, accepted his 
offer of service, and sent him away in peace. Joab, 
the leader of David's host, soon heard of this reconcil- 
iation ; and cherishing a purpose of revenge against 
Abner for the death of his brother Asahel, slain by 
him in battle, and perhaps likewise fearing to find in 
him a formidable rival, he treacherously slew him 
under pretence of a friendly interview. David dis- 



claimed with horror all complicity in the murder, and 
invoked divine vengeance upon Joab ; and he and his 
people made great lamentation over Aimer's grave. 

There is, of course, but little resemblance between 
the circumstances we have thus narrated, and those 
which suggest their use to-day ; and yet the words we 
have read are most appropriate to that appalling trag- 
edy which is now pressing so heavily upon our hearts. 
For I take it for granted that one thought is upper- 
most in every mind to-day. You are all filled and 
burdened with one absorbing theme, and any other 
would be a mere impertinence and intrusion. And 
yet how hard it seems — how impossible — to utter any 
thing of what we all so deeply feel ! There are times 
when thought and feeling appear too great and deep 
for speech — when excitement outruns expression ; and 
so it is now with us. How little we anticipated the 
presence of these emblems of mourning here to-day ! 
Every thing seemed to summon us to rejoicing, at this 
glad and hallowed hour. The bright and opening 
promise of this early spring-time ; the day of rest, 
with its sacred associations, familiar, yet ever new; 
this particular Sabbath, observed by the Church for 
centuries as the anniversary of that triumphant resur- 
rection which " abolished death, and brought life and 
immortality to light ; " and the thought of victory and 
the hope of peace, swelling our hearts with unutter- 
able gratitude and immeasurable gladness : all these 
conspired, and concentrated upon this morning in a 
singular and unprecedented call to cheerful praise. 



God seemed to say to us : " My children, rejoice to-day: 
rejoice in the budding and bursting spring ; rejoice in 
the Sabbath's sacred peace ; rejoice in a risen and 
reigning Saviour; rejoice in the triumph of law, and 
liberty, and righteousness, and the cheering dawn of a 
better and grander national prosperity. Any one of 
these might well give you ground for gladness ; but in 
my lavish and royal bounty I give you them all at 
once — wherefore gather in my house of prayer, and re- 
joice greatly before me." Such seemed to be God's 
voice in our ears, as we looked forward to this day. 
But how suddenly and sadly all this is changed ! On 
the eventful anniversary of that day, when, four years 
ago, our country's flag was first lowered, in surrender, 
though not in disgrace, before oj)en and armed rebel- 
lion ; when, after four years of terrible and bloody 
war, the same sturdy and loyal hands which lowered it 
then, hoisted it again on that same war-worn spot, 
where treason had its birth and its death-blow ; when 
by broad and rolling rivers, and on Northern mount- 
ain-slopes, and on limitless Western prairies, and by 
the shores of the far Pacific sea, in city and village, in 
ship and camp, the loyal millions who could not in 
person witness that timely and fitting restitution, were 
joining in its jubilant celebration; when the National 
capital itself was thrilling with its full share of the 
nation's joy: on the evening of that momentous and 
illustrious day, in the very centre and heart of govern- 
ment, two assassins select and steal upon their victims. 
One, the revered and beloved Chief-Magistrate of the 



Republic; the other, liis highest and wisest helper — 
the calmest, coolest, most sagacious, most truly con- 
servative of our statesmen — the man whose place 
among us to-day no other living statesman could fill — 
the man who, while the nation's strength has been 
strained to the utmost in her desperate contest with 
domestic foes, has watched with clear and tranquil eye 
the conduct of the outer world — whose hand, with 
steady persistence, in spite of thoughtless niisaj)pre- 
hension and malicious calumny, has for four years 
held us back from the terrible, perhaps it would have 
been the fatal, complication of foreign war : — the one, 
in the careless relaxation of a welcome hour of ease ; 
the other, an old man, already maimed and mangled, 
stretched on a bed of helpless suffering — to assault 
whom was an act of dastardly ferocity which belittles 
and palliates mere murder. A few brief moments 
suffice them to do the deed — with full success in the 
one case, with all but full success in the other — and to 
vanish into mysterious concealment. Then, through 
the hours of that appalling night, the strange electric 
whisper tells the horrible tidings over the land ; as 
day returns, men come forth and gaze on one another 
with white faces and trembling lips ; the flag, hoisted 
to the masthead in triumph, sinks to the half-mast in 
mourning ; the bells which pealed for victory, toll 
their muffled sorrow ; and the nation which wakened 
to rejoice, is bowed in anguish and in tears. As with 
ancient Israel, when David's triumph was marred and 
saddened by Absalom's death, so verily our " victory 



that day was turned into mourning unto all the peo- 
ple." The page then written in history is one never 
to be forgotten. History has indeed recorded some 
such tilings before. Great despots and tyrants have 
often fallen victims to the vengeance of their outraged 
and desperate subjects, who found in this last resort 
the vindication of their liberties; the gallant Henry 
the Fourth of France perished by an assassin's knife, a 
victim to the fierce hate of Popery, imperilled by his 
reign ; and a far nearer parallel was furnished three 
centuries ago, when the illustrious William of Orange 
was stricken down by murder, in the midst of the 
great task of asserting and securing the independence 
of the States of Holland from the tyranny of Spain. 
But in this age, and especially on this continent, the 
crime is new and strange. We are shocked and hor- 
ror-stricken by its unlooked-for revival. We recognize 
it with dismay as an importation from foreign climes — 
a relic of long past and almost forgotten barbarism — 
nay, a deed fresh from the atmosphere of the infernal 
pit. We thought that four years, with their unutter- 
able experience, had sufficed to sound the depths and 
ffauffe the dimensions of rebellion. We thought that 
the wholesale and shameless perjury in which it had 
its birth, its cold-blooded massacre of hundreds of dis- 
armed and surrendered prisoners, its slow, deliberate 
torture and starvation of, they tell us, sixty thousand 
helpless captives, compared to which hot murder seems 
like mercy, had exhausted its catalogue of crimes, and 
embodied all its malignant spirit. But we have now 



10 

found " in the lowest deep a lower deep ; " the Ameri- 
can people have learned — and the lesson has been burn- 
ed into their hearts and memories as with a red-hot 
iron — that the spirit of treason is the very spirit of 
hell. Warm it, and like a viper it will sting you. 
Dally and treat with it, and it will turn again and 
rend you. Spare it, and it will strike you to the 
heart. It wields the sword of open war up to the ut- 
most limit of compulsory surrender, and then takes 
up the torch of the incendiary and the knife of the 
assassin. 

The jiresent is no time to attempt to delineate the 
character or narrate the deeds of Abraham Lincoln. 
We must have for that, calmer minds and cooler mo- 
ments. We must wait until time has healed our grief 
and soothed our bitterness ; until distance has softened 
the horrid scene of his tragic death, and left his life 
and acts to be, as they shall be, a theme and study for 
the centuries. We can do little more now than feel, 
as we all do so deeply and painfully feel, our vast and 
irreparable loss. We all know, and all remember to- 
day, what great things he has been the instrument in 
God's hand of doing for us and for our country. This 
plain and once obscure man, four years ago almost un- 
known to fame, possessing little more than a mere local 
notoriety — how in that brief space has he loomed up 
and grown great before the world ! How we trem- 
bled, in doubt and anxiety, when in the nation's dark 
crisis and extremity he stepped out of the ranks, and 
took upon his shoulders his mighty responsibilities! 



11 

The work appointed him was greater, I verily believe, 
than has been laid on any man, Bince Moses received 
his divine commission to lead forth Israel from bondage 
to freedom. And yet who will say to-day that those 
responsibilities have not been well and nobly borne — 
that his work has not been faithfully and wisely <l<>ne — 
that he had not attained, even though the final con- 
summation was not realized, an unexpected and mag- 
nificent success \ Putting aside minor defects in judg- 
ment — errors which to some may have seemed great in 
principle or policy — occasional shortcomings in forecast 
and sagacity about which men's opinions vary — the na- 
tion records in its tears to-day its all but unanimous 
verdict, that the gigantic burden he has now laid down 
for ever was carried manfully and well ; that the al- 
most superhuman service demanded of him by his 
country was not only faithfully but ably rendered. 
As we trace back the brief but brilliant record of 
American history, how few names we find fit to serve 
as his measure and parallel ! We hesitate instinct- 
ively to comjmre any man with Washington. We 
seem to have agreed to place him upon a pedestal 
where no other feet shall ever be suffered to stand — an 
altitude of worth and greatness where none may ap- 
proach and rival him. And yet it is obvious and un- 
deniable that, vast as was the work of George Wa>li- 
ington, the task and burden of Abraham Lincoln were 
ten-fold greater. Three millions of people, along a 
narrow strip of sea-coast, separated from their foe by 
three thousand miles of ocean, were the trust confided 



12 

to the Father of his country. The single State of New- 
York comprises a larger population and more precious 
interests to-day, than the united colonies when Wash- 
ington headed them in their struggle for independence. 
Thirty millions of men — for it was the whole nation 
which it was his aim and task to save from the common 
abyss and madness of rebellion — thirty millions, spread 
across the broad continent from the Eastern to the 
Western sea — even the loyal masses rent by party dis- 
cord — an army numbered by hundreds of thousands, 
first to create, and then to wield — an interminable 
stretch of sea-coast, a stupendous expanse of territory, 
which naval and military operations must cover and 
penetrate — and the jealousy and ill-will of foreign 
lands — these were the elements of the gigantic prob- 
lem whose solution was intrusted to Abraham Lincoln. 
He wore no regal purple ; but the weight of a colossal 
empire rested on his shoulders. And not only did he 
nobly bear its burdens, but he manfully resisted its 
temptations. Washington has received, and right de- 
servedly, the applause of the world, which wondered 
as it applauded, for his modest withdrawal when his 
work was done — for his forbearing, in imitation of 
other great leaders of revolutions, to take up the scep- 
tre, after he had laid down the sword. But did Abra- 
ham Lincoln withstand less nobly the manifold greater 
seductions which appealed to his ambition ? Who 
dare accuse him to-day — whatever else may be laid to 
his charge — of acting in his high place from selfish and 
mercenary motives ? Who ventures to say, that in any 



13 



shape or measure he employed to elevate and aggran- 
dize himself the enormous power thrust into his hands 
by his generous and confiding countrymen ? /How sin- 
gularly pure he was, when too many in high places 
were corrupt ; how unambitious he was, when others 
found in their country's calamities the means of their 
own advancement ; how simple and unaffected he was, 
when a sudden rise to the giddy heights of greatness 
so rarely fails to overthrow the balance and spoil the 
temper ; how cheerful and resolute he was, even when 
others faltered and gave ground — when so large a part 
of the loyal people once and again fell back from around 
him, and left him almost alone, in the heat and din of 
the conflict, on the ground which his steadfast feet 
never yielded for a moment ! But there is a still ten- 
derer element in our loving sorrow. His personal and 
private traits, full as much as his more public attri- 
butes and official manifestations, have laid such a hold 
on the nation's heart as was hardly ever established by 
any other man. Who that ever came within its range 
has failed to feel and do homage to the unfeigned and 
transparent goodness of his nature? And/ how won- 
derfully have his broad and genial kindliness and char- 
ity, like a magic spell cast over the land, drawn the 
hearts of even opponents and bitter detractors to him 
with magnetic and irresistible power ! It is not always 
so— it has not been often so, with the great and mighty. 
Often, kings and potentates who have swayed the scep- 
tre and wielded power wisely and justly and well, chill 
and awe and repel those who approach them nearer ; 



14 

as the towering mountain, swelling on the distant sight 
in graceful outlines, reveals to the near beholder rude 
rocks and barren and shaggy precipices uninviting and 
inaccessible to man. But in his case, while the ruler 
was admirable, the man was dear ; and to the collective 
nation's reverent esteem, was added the individual citi- 
zen's instinctive and involuntary love for that large- 
hearted, gentle, clement, noble nature. And in this 
view we see, not only the demoniac wickedness of this 
black deed, but its insensate folly also. All sin is 
folly ; but this act embodies the wildest insanity of 
crime. Well might the man-slayer have bethought 
himself — and stayed his sacrilegious hand at the re- 
membrance — of those words, familiar both to his mem- 
ory and his lips, which our great English poet puts 
into the mouth of an expectant murderer in relation to 
his intended victim : 

" this Duncan 

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking-off." 

The author of all evil — that " murderer from the be- 
ginning " — the prince and prompter of assassins — never 
served his friends and followers worse — never more ut- 
terly and manifestly betrayed, while he used them — 
than when he incited and helped them to do this deed 
of infamy ; and treason, staggering and overwhelmed, 
by this last fugitive and desperate blow, has not only 
gathered no strength and gained no ground, but has 
swept away her last refuge, blotted out her last hope 



15 



of mercy, .and robbed her adherents of one who, in the 
ready exercise of pardon, even to the verge of weak- 
ness, would have proved ih.-ir kindest intercessor and 
their ablest Mend. 

We may gather, my brethren, from this appalling 
experience, the weightiest and most profitable instruc- 
tion — as we always may from the providence of God, 
if we " wisely consider of his doing." And we may 
learn, not only the plain and ordinary lessons of the 
frail mortality of man, the shadowy vanity of earthly 
ereatness, the inscrutable sovereignty of the Eternal 
King — but also special ones, which are all the more 
significant and emphatic for being taught us by such 
unusual and appalling means. Perhaps we sorely 
needed so stern an admonition as this. Perhaps we 
were in danger, in the exultation of triumph, of relax- 
ing that " eternal vigilance " which is, and ever must 
be, the " price of liberty." Perhaps we were risking, 
in the final hour of apparently complete success, the 
loss of the very prize for which we had toiled and 
yearned and prayed and waited so wearily and so 
l 011 g — for which Ave had poured out so much blood, ex- 
pended such countless treasure, offered such costly 
sacrifices. Perhaps, in the very good nature and ca re- 
less joy of present victory and coming peace, we were 
tending to a weak and culpable clemency toward those 
red-handed ringleaders of rebellion, who had stricken 
at the nation's life, and almost compassed its ruin. 
Saul was rejected from being king over Israel, because 
he spared the Amalekitish Agag, whom God had com- 



16 

manded him to' destroy. Aliab welcomed Benhadad, 
the vanquished king of Syria and enemy of Israel, with 
the words, " Is he yet alive % he is my brother :" — and 
Jehovah's message to him was : " Because thou hast let 
go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter 
destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and 
thy people for his people." I assume no parallels be- 
tween our history and that of ancient Israel. God for- 
bid that I should presumptuously ascribe to his provi- 
dential dealings of to-day an interpretation identical 
with that given by his own word to his dealings with 
his people of old. But the great principles of his 
moral government are the same then and now and al- 
ways ; and this I do say, in the fear of God, and as the 
truth of God, enforced by this appalling calamity and 
crime — that a national tendency and crying sin among 
us is a growing failure and reluctance to enforce justice 
and vindicate by punishment the majesty of law. Our 
jails are filled with murderers ; — and who swings upon 
the scaffold ? Our land is red with violence and stain- 
ed with crime ; and how many pay the swift and right- 
eous penalty of their transgressions ? And now, when 
we were almost ready to absolve and welcome back the 
perpetrators of the most gigantic crime which has ever 
cursed our land, no thoughtful mind can fail, or refuse 
to see the strange significance of the fact, that the two 
men reached by this murderous deed, were the very two 
men who were most inclined to stamp on the coming 
era of reconstruction and peace the policy of leniency 
and forgiveness. But if this tendency to excess of mer- 



17 

cy has been dangerous, it is needless fco Bay there is no 
sueli danger now. The madness of crime — a rude but 
effective remedy — lias cured the nation of the weak 
folly of mercy. Indulgence and amnesty are not the 
kind of mercy which a righteous God deals out to the 
transgressors of his law; such grace is not the grace of 
that Lord God Almighty who " will by uo means clear 
the guilty;" and God's providence forces on our minds 
the corroboration of the indubitable teaching of His 
word. The American people learn to-day, not only 
that rebellion must be crushed, but that traitors must 
be punished — not in hot and blood-thirsty vengeance, 
but in stern and solemn vindication of eternal right 
and law. And they learn, too — well will it be for 
them if they never forget it more — a new hatred of 
that accursed system of oppression and bondage which 
has been the source of all our woes. Slavery was the 
root — and lo ! we have plucked the bitter fruit in its 
full ripeness — first treason, and now murder ! Looking 
upon him who was fondly loved and foully murdered, 
we resolve, not only to decree freedom, but to obliter- 
ate slavery ; to strike the fetters from every limb, and 
give to every creature on our country's soil made in 
the image of God, the full and sacred liberty of man- 
hood. 

But we find in our loss and grief not only instruc- 
tion, but consolation also. The infamous purpose of 
treason cannot be thus accomplished. There may be a 
way in which the fabric of our government and liber- 
ties maybe overthrown ; but manifest at least it isthat 
2 



18 

this is not the way. Any other government on earth 
but one, perhaps, would at such a shock have crumbled 
into shapeless and hopeless anarchy ; but here, with a 
quiet readiness which seems to us a matter of 
course, but at which the world will marvel, the vacan- 
cy which murder makes is instantly filled by the con- 
stitutional successor; and the ponderous machine of 
the republic moves on, without pause or jar ! And as 
to him for whom we mourn — evidently, in God's wise 
purpose, Abraham. Lincoln's life-work was done. He 
saw and hailed the promise of reunion and peace, like 
the glad coming of the breaking day — how rich a re- 
ward for his hard working and weary waiting ! Like 
the Lawgiver of old, who led rescued Israel through 
the desert way, he looked upon the promised land of 
liberty and peace, and fondly longed and hoped to en- 
ter it and rest in it, and reap there the pleasant fruit of 
toil and trial ; but God had said to him also, though 
we knew it not : a I have caused thee to see it with 
thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither." Like 
the farmer, who tills and sows in the chill and early 
spring-time, and sees at last the yellow promise of the 
harvest, but dies before he can gather in the golden 
sheaves, — so he had sown with us in tears, but was not 
to be one of the rejoicing reapers. He saw only the 
beginning of the end ; but he saw it early and plainly. 
More than a year ago, in that noble proclamation of 
national thanksgiving, which history will preserve as 
one of the grandest and most memorable utterances 
which ever fell on a nation's ear from a ruler's lips, he 






19 

recorded his sure and sanguine expectation, in his conn- 
try's behalf, of " continuance of years, with large in- 
crease of freedom" — an expectation which every hour 
since that day lias strengthened and justified, and 
which was strongest and brightest, for him and for all, 
the very hour he died ! His latest utterances were full 
of hope and cheer: and his eye was beaming with joy- 
ous and genial anticipations — bright with the radiance 
of final victory — the very instant its light was quenched 
for ever. And then, " we sorrow not even as others 
which have no hope. 11 How comforting to-day to the 
Christian heart, is the ground we have for trusting 
that he who has been so cruelly and suddenly smitten 
down, was not unprepared for the dread and solemn 
change ! Even a careless observer cannot have failed 
to notice, not only the conscientious uprightness, but 
also the growingly reverential tone, of his acts and 
words ; and private testimony, more direct and con- 
vincing, has assured us from his own lips of his trust 
for salvation in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Unspeakably consoling at this hour, is the hope thus 
permitted to us, that from that bloody scene of success- 
ful violence, — in that dread hour of fainting and swoon- 
ing nature, — his soul was gathered in the mighty 
arms of a Divine Redeemer — that after his rough life- 
voyage, buffeted to the last by storms and surges, he 
was harbored in that safe shelter, where care and 
trouble can never reach him, where treachery and mur- 
der can never harm him more. 

God's promises comfort us well, in this trying hour. 



20 

" God is our refuge and strength, a very present help 
in trouble." " The Lord of hosts is with us ; the God 
of Jacob is our refuge." Man dies — but God lives on. 
Other and untried hands now grasp the reins of execu- 
tive power, and assume, under God, the trust of our 
country's destinies. Let us fervently and unceasingly 
pray, that on the new President's shoulders, the mantle 
of the illustrious dead may fall. Let us stand by him 
and by our country's cause with invincible and hope- 
ful resolution ; and if we thus " deal courageously," 
" the Lord shall be with the good." 



